Orla inserted her scuffed bronze-colored key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. With its peeling light blue paint, it fortunately did nothing to betray the apartment's relative opulence.
It hadn't been like this when her and her grandmother, Kahri, first moved in. No, at that time, the place had been the dictionary definition of what the locals might call a "shithole," a term as unfamiliar to them as it was second nature to their new neighbors.
It was a studio, but the walls had been covered in faded posters for old socialist events, and each corner had been filled with discarded rags of clothing so tattered that in many cases it was impossible to tell what part of the body they were meant to cover. These were far from the only unwelcome surprises they had discovered within, however.
The only mattress was stained with red, green, and yellow blotches that neither woman dared to guess the origin of. The bathroom was infested with discarded bits of hair, human and animal alike. But worst of all was the kitchen. The smell emanating from the white Spartan refrigerator was indescribable. It was as if something had died in there - and it probably had. So potent was the stench that it had drifted to the adjacent microwave, oven, and dishwasher as well - or had it originated from one of these other sources, and the fridge had been a secondary destination? The space was certainly small enough for such a migration to have taken place. Who could say? Who would ever want to say?
But if Orla and Kahri were nothing else, they were proud, and if they had nothing else, they still had their dignity, and so they had spent the first few weeks of their residency in the government-provided housing making it decent for human habitation.
It hadn't been easy, especially since Orla had been forced to walk down four flights of stairs to deposit all of the old tenant's various refuse in the graffitied dumpsters behind the complex (the elevators were all broken), but they had gotten it done. Most of all, though, Orla had just felt bad for her grandmother: she said she enjoyed the work - the scrubbing and the painting - and Orla didn't doubt it, but Kahri was 60 years old now, and the manual labor must have taken a toll on her old body nonetheless. The logic was thus: if Orla's back and joints ached for days afterward, then the pain endured by her grandmother, 41 years her senior, must have been at least tenfold her own.
But Kahri never uttered a single solitary word of complaint, and so Orla could only guess at the magnitude of her suffering. It just wasn't in her nature to protest, so informed as it was by a base stoicism that had been drilled into her entire generation beginning from their childhoods.
But it was ultimately all worth it, every scab and scar, and never more so than after long, hard days like today. Orla was enrolled in the local community college, where she was studying nursing. Her instinct had been to major in something more “fulfilling”, such as creative writing, but money was such a concern for them that she had been forced to take a more practical route. It wasn't all bad - she enjoyed the idea of working in a field that so directly involved helping others at their neediest - but the biology classes in particular could really kick her ass sometimes.
Today was "sometimes," and Orla could not imagine how much worse it would have all seemed if the home she returned to was still in the state it had been when they had first inherited it, if she had been forced to endure the sight of that small, boxy, bunny-eared CTV on the dresser, for example, that had been sitting there when they first arrived like some prank housewarming gift.
Its static-saturated image might have just driven her to jump out of one of the windows. Assuming she could get one of them open enough to fit her body through, a herculean task if there ever was one.
Orla's spirits were further lifted at the sight of Kahri in the refurbished kitchen. Bent over the open door to the stove, the rich odor of spiced turkey wafted out of it, and Orla breathed it in greedily. Normally, they knew the dish would be reserved for Thanksgiving, but they had no such associations, and as such felt no compunction about eating it in February.
"Oh, that smells amazing, Grandmother!"
Kahri frowned, cautiously peering into the appliance as if she believed the poultry might explode like an organic IED.
"It's nothing like what we had back home" she replied, grimly.
Orla sighed. Nothing in this country would ever compare to what they had left behind. To what they had been forced to leave behind. It wasn't just her being pessimistic. It was an inescapable fact.
"You always say that!"
"And it's true."
Kahri slammed the stove shut, evidently as satisfied or unsatisfied as she thought she was ever going to be with the progress of the turkey's preparation.
"It doesn't mean we haven't made the best of it," Orla retorted.
Kahri nodded, and the two met in the middle of the apartment, between the bed they shared and the small flat-screen television they had salvaged from a thrift store when they had been searching for raw material that Kahri could repurpose to make custom clothing for them both.
They hugged as Orla leaned down to kiss her grandmother on her red lips. They held the kiss...and then they opened their mouths and began to make out like two horny teenagers at a drive-in midnight movie.
Boobs pressed together, Kahri moved her wizened hands down her granddaughter’s back and grabbed the supple ass cheeks below that were presently outlined by her tight yoga pants, which had been expressly designed (by Kahri) to accent an even lesser butt's roundness, and so for Orla lent it the shape of a small globe.
Orla wasn't offended, or scandalized by her grandmother's touch. In fact, she reciprocated, though she was only able to grasp but a fraction of her grandmother's elephantine hindquarters. Oh, but how she prayed that her own rear would one day grow to even be half as large as her's!
Kahri, having determined that Orla's ass had been sufficiently groped, reached up and ran her worn fingers through her granddaughter's curly, long, dark hair, so much like her own, before it became shot-through with grey, while her other hand tweaked the nipple of Orla's right breast through her v-cut shirt. When she felt it harden, she shifted it over a few inches and attended to its counterpart, causing Orla to moan into her grandma's mouth, even as they continued to entwine their tongues together.
Orla suddenly pushed away from Kahri, lifting her hands up as if to physically prevent the old woman from further manipulating her.
"Please, I want to, but I need my strength for tonight."
Now it was Kahri's turn to let out a forlorn sigh, even as she couldn't steal her brown eyes away from Orla's stiff nipples, which, sufficiently stimulated, were now almost poking through her grey shirt. Kahri licked her plump lips greedily, recalling the taste of them from countless romantic nights spent in bed together, when the waves of bliss they felt seemed as if they would be as endless in their coming as the ocean upon the shore.
But it was true: Orla needed all of the energy she could muster to get through her shift at the club tonight. It was a cliché, the nursing student who moonlighted as a stripper, but it didn't make it any less of a reality. Neither woman minded, however. Orla enjoyed dancing, and Kahri enjoyed the idea of her dancing. And both of them really enjoyed the money - all cash - that she brought home in the early hours, just as the sun started to rise over their adopted city.
But it wasn't a luxury. They needed the money desperately, the stipend and benefits they received from the federal and state governments both not near enough to live on.
"I should start getting ready now, before we eat."
"Good idea. I'll watch."
As Orla went over to the small closet they shared, Kahri stretched out on the bed, relieved to finally rest her tired muscles after spending so much time slaving over dinner.
Orla undressed, removing her shirt and yoga pants, and Kahri began to touch herself, hiking up the skirt of her apron to better access her white panties and the moist sex underneath.
Orla looked over, saw her grandmother's indiscretion, and laughed while shaking her head.
"You're so bad!"
"How can you blame me, looking like that?"
Orla's body was incredible. Her thighs, butt, and hips were so thick, and yet a trace of a six-pack could still be glimpsed upon her belly. Her sizable breasts, too, now freed from the black bra that had held them captive, seemed to defy gravity with their perkiness.
But Kahri had to admit that her granddaughter's naked form induced pangs of jealousy in herself, as vivid as the lust it inspired simultaneously. She could still remember when she had looked like that, back in their homeland, cultivating for her an army of male suitors large enough to have successfully hunted a dragon (and they would have, had she demanded its head as a prerequisite for her love).
Now, she was old. Her body still attracted attention, albeit from a much older crowd (she knew the middle-aged proprietor of the corner market where she had bought the turkey today was an admirer, the way he stared at her as she made her way slowly around his cramped store), but it could be cold comfort sometimes in the face of the stiffness in her bones, and the noise her knees made when she was forced to bend over.
She was hot for a grandma, but the qualifier was the catch. She'd be lying if she had said she didn't yearn for the same naive beauty that Orla currently took for granted. But was that not the folly of all youth, to take as a given that which they would one day bitterly mourn the loss of?
Orla walked over to their refurbished dresser, and began rummaging through the top drawer. She quickly found what she had been looking for - the yellow G-string and bikini top she had worn the last time she danced, a few days ago.
"Thanks for getting this clean in time!" she called to Kahri, who could only manage a bothered grunt in reply.
But she was grateful, doubly so because the laundry room, located in the basement of their complex, was not a place in which to tread lightly. It always felt like evil spirits lurked in the shadows, waiting to strike as soon as your back was turned, to drag you into their despairing dimensions.
But something about the bright color contrasted against her ebony skin had apparently “activated” the clientele, and the increased take she had brought home that morning was the proof. It would be foolish to wear anything else.
As she wedged the thin fabric between her spherical ass cheeks, she again looked over at Kahri. She was rubbing herself even more furiously than before, providing yet further evidence of its enticing effect.
After struggling to get her breasts into the too-small top, she walked back over to the closet, and retrieved the cropped t-shirt she had picked out for the night.
Kahri had found the used article at a local thrift store, and under Orla's direction, had airbrushed the words "CHEAT ON HIM" in bold, pink-outlined letters across the front of it. It had seemed so absurd to her, once Orla explained what the phrase meant, that anyone should want to advertise such a notion on their own clothing, but she insisted that this was what was fashionable with young women nowadays.
This country and its bizarre culture would always be a mystery to her, Kahri figured, no matter how long they stayed here. Too much of her life had been in that other place. Orla, thank the Gods, would not have that problem. Before long, one would never think she had been a refugee at all.
The last piece of her outfit she had to put on was her jeans, and Orla jumped, wiggled, and gyrated to get them over her wide hips and butt. With that, the show was regrettably over (but what a finale!), and Kahri removed herself from her prone position to check on the turkey again.
She was horny beyond measure now, but she would just have to see to that later, when Orla was at the club, shaking her considerable assets for the men who had braved the cold weather to admire her granddaughter's divine shape.
The two women reclined as well as they could on the wooden chairs that accompanied their small kitchen table, the empty plates before them, littered with the flotsam of their meal, the bones and scraps of meat.
Kahri had exchanged her apron for a tank top and sweatpants, and her engorged black belly sat exposed, with her EE-size breasts, unconstrained by any undergarment, resting atop it. Kahri rubbed it, perhaps hoping that in doing so her digestion would go more smoothly.
They had not spoken a single word to each other as they ate, instead huddling over and eating their supper as if it were their first meal after a prolonged period of starvation.
An outside observer might have scoffed in disgust at this display, the way they consumed the meat almost without a moment to breath, the only breaks taken to drink Diet Coke from their reusable cups (which in turn was really just a way to help the food go down easier), but this was how things were done in the place they were from.
There, it was customary for even kings and government officials to eat with complete abandon, the amount of food allowed to fall to the floor or on their dress evidence of the quality of the cooking. For them, to speak, or Gods forbid, eat slowly, would be seen as an insult. One might even be flogged in the town square over such a grave transgression!
It pained Kahri to recall the feasts of her youth, when her family would gather around their stone dinner table and gorge themselves on exotic fruit and exotic meat, the family sabertooth greedily waiting underfoot to eat as much of their refuse as it could.
Her favorite staple of those holidays had been the tender brains of the Spiked Monkey, which no one else seemed to like, its placement entirely ceremonial if not for her particular tastes. But all the better - more for her. She could almost still taste it, the crunch of the outer shell, so carefully roasted over the course of hours by her skilled father.....
Kahri suddenly noticed that her granddaughter was staring at her swollen gut. She slapped it, sending ripples across its expansive surface.
"You want to feel the weight of it on you, yes?" she asked, thin eyebrows raised, teasing.
"You know I do. But I have to go soon."
"Too bad," Kahri replied with a shrug, and covered her stomach with her tank top. The girth of it bulged against the worn fabric, threatening to burst through it at any moment.
Orla heard her grandmother lock the door behind her. She took a deep breath, and surveyed either end of their hallway. Relief: no one else was out right now. She didn't need anyone questioning where a young, pretty girl like her was going alone, at this hour. Was the answer not obvious enough already?
She hated this part. To traverse this city, at night, felt like tempting fate. How long until she was forced to defend herself? And when that time came, would she be capable? What if she found herself cornered by not just one motivated man, but a pack of them?
She would cross that bridge when she got there, to borrow a phrase from one of her professors, a handsome young white man that she wouldn't have minded spotting in the audience at the club. Hey, she thought, maybe she should tell him what her schedule was? The thrill of the idea allowed her to gather her courage enough to finally make her way down the dilapidated stairs to the first floor, and then out onto the cold street beyond.
They had no car (not that owning one in this neighborhood would be a wise decision) so she walked the mercifully short distance (a few blocks) to the elevated platform, praying as she did that she would not have to wait too long outside for the train. She was wearing a jacket, but that could only do so much. Thank the Gods - the locomotive pulled into the station with a screeching halt just as she climbed the last of the stairs. She hurried aboard, thinking again that she must be blessed this day when she saw that the car was empty. No screaming, colicky babies, or raving homeless. And, most important of all, no shady-looking men. She could be at ease, at least for the length of the ride, which should take about 20 minutes.
The train accelerated, and left the station. The conductor said something over the loudspeaker, so hopelessly garbled that Orla doubted anyone alive or dead could ever hope to make it out, not even the scholars of the Low Tower, who had blinded themselves in a mad effort to better hear the vibrations of the Gods (or so it was said). No, Orla thought, even their trained ears would have been no match for that auditory assault.
About halfway to her stop, the lights in the car flickered out, not surprising considering the condition of the locomotive. But there was an upside - with the harsh fluorescents extinguished, Orla could see out of the windows, past the crude tags that had been carved into the glass with knives and keys alike.
A vast sea of rooftops, water towers, and fire escapes extended before her, and beyond were the lights of the skyscrapers that made up the downtown of the city. She had recently learned, from a patron at the club, that the red blinking wisps at their apexes served to keep planes from colliding with them, and were not, in fact, the ghosts of angry suicides, as she had first thought
It was a nice view, the dark of night helping to smooth over the rough urban edges that daylight would otherwise reveal - the overflowing garbage cans, graffiti, and broken windows. But it was nothing compared to the skyline of her adolescence.
Here, the buildings were so...boring! Did the architects ever even think to use something other than a rectangular shape for their creations, or were their imaginations too limited? And don't even get her started on their choice of materials - did they realize they could use something other than glass and steel?
She had tried to talk to some of her classmates about it, but she couldn't ever make any headway. She didn't blame them: she too probably wouldn't understand the concept of a family home made entirely of twisting vines and vivacious flowers if she had never seen one for herself, let alone been inside more than a few.
These thoughts made her terribly homesick. She missed the wide canals, filled with blue water and colossal, colorful fish. She missed the sculptures of heroes past that, in some cases, were taller than the surrounding buildings. And, most of all, she missed the twin suns, that kept the climate at a perfect temperature year-round, for all 400 days. The snow and cold she was presently suffering were complete unknowns to her, and would have been to everyone else she had known in her past life.
Speaking of: the train once again came to a sudden stop with a banshee's wail. The doors opened, and Orla groaned as she stood from her seat. She was not looking forward to the trek - five blocks - that she would have to endure to finally arrive at the club. She thought of her grandma, undoubtedly lying back on their bed, finally touching herself to completion. She liked dancing, but, right now, in the face of the freezing wind, she had to admit that she wished she was back there with her, where it was safe and warm.
Orla was correct: Khari was presently, nearly completely naked, on the bed. All that was left on her were her panties, the white thong pushed to the side, and she was rubbing her clit as she watched a video on her phone, which she had reclined against the far wall. With her free hand, she grabbed a handful of her belly, causing her long fingernails to press into the soft skin there.
It had taken her what felt like an eternity to get even the slightest "hang" of the infernal device (provided by the city council on the day they moved in), but the effort spent had ultimately paid dividends. How else could she get to relieve cherished moments such as these, when her cunning granddaughter was off, busy supporting them both?
They had taken the footage the night their apartment was "completed," defined for them as the day when they had finally saved up enough of their welfare money to buy a new mattress and comforter set. They had cut every coupon they could, and bought countless food items that had already expired from the back of the local bodega, but this was the reward: to finally have a decent place to sleep after the day's many hardships were over.
But a new bed demanded a blessing, and what better way than to fornicate atop it? A high priestess of the Church herself would have recommended nothing less (and been ready to provide her own services if the need arose)!
Kahri, with Orla's help, had gotten the video app on the phone going, and placed it on the dresser across from the bed to obtain the best angle of themselves. They were both already nude, so Orla promptly laid horizontal down the length of the mattress, and Kahri awkwardly lifted herself atop it. Then, she slowly lowered her gargantuan, cellulite-ridden buttocks down onto Orla's face. When she felt her granddaughter's expert tongue on her cunt, she knew she had gone far enough. She relaxed her big legs so that they now straddled either side of Orla's head, and leaned forward. She found Orla's own vagina, freshly shaved, and began to dutifully lick it.
They lapped at each other like that for 20 minutes, until their bodies shook with waves of pleasure. What a coincidence - at the same moment as her former, miniature self-experienced such bliss, her current iteration felt the same, though much less intense. It was never the same without Orla to assist her!
But it did the job nevertheless, and she felt her mind clear with the release of the built-up tension, that had accumulated until almost the point of being painful. What a relief, what a release...
As she laid on her back, still feeling the odd aftershock cascade through her fat inner thighs, she reflected with amusement on how taboo, even illegal, these carnal acts were in their new home.
It amused her because of how uncontroversial, even boring, it was considered in the Kingdom of the Twin Suns (a rough translation of its true name into the cumbersome English language, that Kahri was still struggling to learn, even with Orla's, who was fluent, help).
When a son or daughter came of age (which for them, was also 18) it was expected that their grandmother, even if she were still married, would strike up a sexual relationship with them, until they found a mate of their own. To prepare them to find a mate of their own, using the experience they had now had with their grandmother.
But this wasn't part of a wide-ranging acceptance of incest. Any other arraignment was strictly verboten, punishable with death in some cases, via being hung, drawn, and quartered, the disembodied head and limbs of the offender(s) tarred and displayed prominently along the high, golden city walls.
Homosexuality wasn't condoned either, especially between two males, and other female/female relations were only tolerated if it was in the presence of a male.
Only this particular match-up was deemed acceptable, and even an honor on the part of the older woman in question, the number of adult grandchildren they had introduced to adulthood in this way a source of pride for them. The exact amount might even be engraved onto their tombstones, if they felt the number was worth bragging about (there was a grave marker in the largest cemetery in the Kingdom that claimed the woman that laid beneath it had fucked 15 of her descendants in her time, believe it or not).
Like many traditions, the custom was established centuries ago, itself inspired by national legend, a fable that grew in the telling, passed down from generation to generation.
The story told was one of a hero, the great warrior Fathi. He was an orphan, and had been raised by his grandmother, Abi, since the death of his parents, who had been killed by the Great Beast when he was still young, when it had swooped down from the blue sky and swallowed them whole while they had been out hunting Scaled Buffalo for their tribe.
On the day of his 18th birthday, he had set out from his small village, spear in hand and Abi at his side, to get revenge on the foul devil that had taken so much from him.
Together they traveled many miles: through rushing rivers, over snowy mountains, and even underground, when they had to crawl on their bare bellies to avoid the scorching veldt above them, where they would have been roasted alive in a matter of minutes by the pure brilliance of the Twin Suns. They made friends, and fought many enemies, man and beast alike, along the way. It was a great journey, and the tale was known by every child born in the Kingdom. But there was one detail left out of the version told to the children, and not known to them until the night of their 18th birthday, when it was traditionally relayed by their grandmother, in private.
Fathi had finally made it to the lair of the Great Beast, a massive cave that held its own terrible ecosystem, filled as it was with its own subterranean jungle inhabited by multi-tusked Dire Elephants, emerald Nagas the length of trees, and man-eating Crimson Lions, along with other deadly flora and fauna only known by the fools who had tried to challenge the Great Beast and were never seen again outside of the sulfur pits of the Underworld.
Abi insisted that she accompany her grandson into the cavern, but he refused, not wanting another beloved member of his family to fall victim to the Great Beast.
"But Fathi," she whispered in their tent, "you will fail, for though you are 18, you are not yet truly a Man, and only a Man can hope to defeat the Great Beast."
To be a Man, he would have to have laid with a woman, and, through many (often humorous) miscommunications and missed opportunities, he had never had the chance to do so, even when there had been so many comely princesses and warrior women on their odyssey that would have been more than happy to have helped.
But now they were in the scorched plains outside the home of the Great Beast, and there were no other women to be found (at least, not any human women).
So Abi commanded her grandson to lay with her. And he did.
But this was not gentle lovemaking: they were warriors and so they fucked like warriors.
For hours, Fathi slammed into Abi, his powerful abdomen and her tremendous obsidian ass colliding with each powerful thrust. When they finally orgasmed, simultaneously, Fathi pulling on her gray hair, Abi screamed so loudly that it almost woke the Great Beast from its dark dreaming.
Then, fully exhausted, they slept, Abi never removing her delicate hand from Fathi's broad chest as she lay beside him, desperate to keep him close for as long as she could.
When morning came, Abi and Fathi said their goodbyes, and when Fathi had finally disappeared into the yawning mouth of the hollow, she wept, sure she would never see her grandson ever again.
But Fathi had been made into a Man by his grandmother, and he bested the multi-tusked Dire Elephants, the emerald Nagas the length of trees, and the man-eating Crimson Lions, along with many other deadly flora and fauna now known by Fathi and Fathi alone. That left only the Great Beast itself, in the deepest part of the sunken rainforest.
The Great Beast spoke as it saw Fathi approach, its legion of heads echoing with a single voice. In tones so thundering the surrounding stalagmites threatened to fall and crush Fathi where he stood, it said:
"I see your cow of a grandmother made of you a man last night. But hear me, boy, it will not be enough. I am the Destroyer, the Engine of Renewal, and you cannot succeed where even Gods have failed. This battle will result in your death, in my devouring of you, and you will join your pitiful parents upon my mass. You will be a part of me when I fly from this rancid grave, and take my revenge on Abi, and the rest of your village. Think on that, if you can: that, in some small sense, it will be you who will be slaughtering your own people."
But these formidable threats did nothing to break Fathi's resolve. He had no words for the Great Beast, no witty retort, his only response his leaping into the air, faithful spear aimed squarely at the creature's main, furry head,
They fought for many days and nights, the ground shaking with every blow. The earth split, tidal waves rose, and whole civilizations were erased in the blink of an eye. All the while, Abi still wailed, the doubt in her heart only growing with each hideous tremble emanating from far below.
But Fathi was victorious, and as he stood on the body of the Great Beast, he heard a voice calling from its vast belly. Cutting it open, he discovered that the Demi-Goddess Elani lay within, still alive after being consumed by the Great Beast many centuries ago, at the conclusion of the Twilight War.
It was love at first sight, and they copulated right there, atop the defeated form of the Great Beast, for many days and nights, the ground shaking with every blow. The earth split, tidal waves rose, and whole civilizations were erased in the blink of an eye.
Eventually, they emerged, hand in hand, as husband and wife, and Abi nearly died of joy at the sight of her grandson in the soft sunlight, who she had already written off for dead (but could not bring herself to abandon, even knowing she would thus face the wrath of the Great Beast). Together, using the bones and hides of the Great Beast and its legions, the three of them laid the physical foundation for the Kingdom of the Twin Suns, more than strong enough to eventually build the city on.
Fathi and Elani were the first King and Queen of the Kingdom, and their heirs ruled in an unbroken line, the descendants of their 15 children, each of them legends themselves.
And when Abi and Fathi passed away of natural causes, Elani brought their souls to the Hall of the Divine, where they were made into Demi-Gods by the Supreme Sky Father. In fact, it was customary for the grandmother and adult grandchild to pray to both before their first night together, to pay their respects to the progenitors of the sacred tradition.
So that was why Kahri could drop her big fat ass right onto Orla's face until she squirted directly into her mouth, and feel absolutely no shame in the act, only unmitigated love and joy, thankful to the Gods that she should live long enough to help her granddaughter in this way.
Exhausted, Kahri succumbed to sleep still undressed, the video restarting to show the women getting into position yet again, mental images of Orla gyrating on stage hypnotizing her into slumber…
The club was packed, though it was a weekday night, by white, black, Asian, and Hispanic men, all there solely because they had come to see her.
They clapped as Orla walked on stage, now clad only in her bright yellow bikini that left little to the imagination. Purposefully exaggerating the sway of her wide hips, she strutted up to the pole, still wet from being wiped down by the last girl, a buxom blonde with skinny legs, and began to dance. The DJ, a sweet Asian man in his late 30s (she had given him a few freebie blowjobs, to thank him for his help), started to play her signature song: a dance remix of Africa by the band Toto.
Ostensibly, that was where Kahri and Orla were from, as it was the closest approximation to their true home (and why she liked the song). Poor Orla, the beautiful refugee from a poverty-stricken African country obscure to the West. At least, that was her cover story. Probably always would be. How could these people ever understand the truth - either version of it? It at least explained their accents and skin color...
She started her practiced routine, alternatively humping and straddling the sleek surface of the pole in time to the thumping beat, that almost made the stage quiver with its booming bass.
Hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's comin' in, 12:30 flight
Her moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
She wondered how many of the men in the audience already had girlfriends, fiancés, and wives. She hoped it was most of them, that they had risked it all just for her. The idea made her vagina begin to moisten under the thin fabric.
I stopped an old man along the way
Hopin' to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say
"Hurry, boy, it's waiting there for you"
It had been a no-brainer for Orla to take up exotic dancing. Not only was the money excellent, but, much like the special relationship between her and her grandmother, there had been no stigma against it in the Kingdom of the Twin Suns. This sort of expression was seen as a way to honor the Gods, and, unlike these men, there was no need to hide the enjoyment of it from one's female partners. Why would they need to, when it was far from rare for couples to visit the temples together? Kahri herself had told Olra many a tale, as they basked in post-coital bliss, of how she and her grandfather had gone down to the local place of worship to see the famed dancers therein.
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
Ooh, ooh
Kahri and her husband had gotten to know them, intimately, in the steam baths in the rear of the temple, after making a generous monetary offering to the Priests and Priestesses, along with taking part in the day’s sacrifice, itself dictated by the phase of the three moons. She had whispered Orla these stories as she slowly rubbed her clit, letting the pressure build and build...
But that was how she had learned the choreography she now employed: based on the cherished memories Kahri had of the holy dancers in the Kingdom of the Twin Suns, who, it was heavily rumored, had learned them while in the midst of their drug-induced communions with the Other Side. Kahri had demonstrated the movements herself, and they had practiced together in their apartment until Orla could have performed them in her sleep.
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless, longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside
Frightened of this thing that I've become
One day, when they had enough money, she would take Kahri to this Africa. She doubted it would compare to the Kingdom, but visiting might still help to alleviate the yearning they felt for their lost home. If nothing else, assuming she isn't married by then, she'd love to have Kahri's head between her legs on the Serengeti, under the celestial awning that she had heard shone there like nowhere else on this planet. How romantic that would be!
"Hurry, boy, she's waiting there for you"
As always happened when she danced, she began to enter a state of "flow." She had learned about it in her Psychology 101 class, but had never experienced it herself until she got this job. As promised by her professor, it was indeed a pleasurable mode of being, an almost automatic footing where her body and mind decoupled, allowing the latter to tread unbridled, into dimensions hardly accessed in other venues....
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
Ooh, ooh
Orla removed her top first, exposing her petite breasts to the enraptured males. The silver piercings, installed just last week, reflected the pink and purple lights overhead. The men whooped and hollered in approval. She lifted her right boob up, and licked the nipple with her tongue. The men whooped and hollered more.
The G-string went next, and Orla briefly ran her pointer finger through her slit, and then inserted the same digit into her mouth, rolling her eyes in exaggerated ecstasy (it tasted good, but not that good). The men whooped and hollered even more, threatening to drown out the music, which would have been quite the feat! She threw the articles of clothing off to the side, but made a mental note to remember to retrieve them when she was done. Kahri had worked hard on them.
One guy in particular, a wiry, unshaven man who Orla recognized as a regular, was so overcome that he rushed the stage, the whites in his eyes visible. Fortunately, he didn't even get close. Tony, a black bouncer (who she had also been known to throw some free pussy too), tackled the poor bastard to the floor.
"Stupid mothafucka!" Tony yelled, as he pinned the Regular to the cold, polished black tile floor. "What, too fuckin' broke to buy a goddamn lap dance?"
He turned his head away in revulsion, and scrunched up his nose.
"Damn, ya fuckin' smell too!" he yelled. "Whoo!," he yowled, while shaking his head.
But Orla was a million miles away already, thinking about the night everything had changed...
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
The piano player in the corner softly played, the murmur of quiet conversation mixing with it to become the background noise of the dimly lit restaurant.
This was Scott and Tanya's favorite spot, and the exclusivity only added to its appeal, as if the (expensive) cocktails and (expensive) steak options weren't enough. But Scott knew the owner, had actually been roommates with him in college (the stories they could tell), and so he never wanted for a reservation.
All said, it was the perfect place for Scott to propose, and the $100,000 ring in his jacket pocket said he had chosen wisely.
And why wouldn't he want to marry Tanya? She had just gotten a BBL, so her ass and stomach were looking right, and that was in addition to her blown-out lips and round, fake tits, not to mention all of the other work she had already scheduled to get done to her face. All of the guys at the firm could barely hide their jealousy that he had bagged such a fine piece of ass, not so suitably sneaking glances at the photos of her he had peppered around his office.
Yes indeed, she would make the perfect trophy wife to accompany him to company parties until he inevitably had a heart attack and died at his desk, midway through the creation of a presentation deck.
Tanya had a suspicion that Scott was going to propose tonight, and she had already decided that she would accept. Was he her soul mate? No, not really, that was his brother, who she had just met up with earlier that day in a hotel near their apartment, but he wouldn't leave his wife (despite her ultimatums), and hey, Scott made a lot of money, so she would be taken care of, right? Plus, this way she and Scott's brother could still have their little rendezvous, like when they fucked in secret at that Fourth of July BBQ his parents had thrown at their palatial estate last summer. Oh, had that been nice - he had made her cum so fucking hard he had to cover her mouth, lest she alert the rest of the guests!
And she could tolerate Scott. Like her, he had no interest in children or religion, the latter they both agreed was squarely for the "dumb white trash MAGA retards stuck in the trailer park." Moreover, her friends were his friends, and his friends were her friends. So, all in all, why not marry him?
Scott was currently ranting about the football game he had stayed up late watching the previous night.
"And the fucking referees…"
Suddenly, the entire restaurant went quiet.
Scott never finished his sentence, because he and Tanya were now too busy gawking at the extraordinary scene around them. It wasn't just that the noise had completely ceased: everyone and everything had totally frozen in place. The piano player's fingers hovered just above the keys, and waiters stood mid-stride, trays of seafood in their hands.
"Babe, what's going on?" Tanya asked Scott, panic in her voice.
"I-I don't know." Scott didn't want to give her the dreaded "ick," but, if he were being honest, he was pretty close to shitting his pants.
"What did you say about refugees?" called a female voice from the other side of the restaurant.
Tanya and Scott turned in the direction of the voice. A woman was walking in their direction, maneuvering around the petrified patrons and wait staff. She was blonde, with big boobs, wide hips, and muscular legs, her curve-hugging red dress accenting every contour of her body.
"Huh?" she asked, as she finally arrived at their table for two.
"I-I wasn't talking about immigrants at all," Scott stammered out. "I was talking about last night's game. The referees - they were complete assholes! We would have won if they had just made some better calls!
"Yeah," Tanya added. "We're not racist or anything at all! We even posted the black squares on our Instagram accounts in 2020! Scott is mentoring some People of Color at his job, to get them on a Management track!"
"See?" Scott interjected. "You just misheard me! Can you unpause everything now? Look, we'll forget the whole thing ever happened!"
"Hmmmm" the mysterious woman murmured, looking at the two with squinted eyes, as if she could better ascertain their honesty if she focused better. She picked up a dinner roll from the basket placed halfway between the couple, and took a bite.
"You know, I believe you," she said, swallowing. "Gods help me, but I do. I must be getting soft after so many millennia."
Tanya and Scott breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"But, to be honest with you two, it was all just an excuse anyway. I'm still going to do what I want with you both. I'm way too into the whole idea now."
Scott and Tanya jumped to their feet, intent on stopping the Mysterious Woman from doing whatever it was she was sinisterly alluding to.
But she just threw her blonde head back and laughed.
"Hey, geniuses, if I can freeze the rest of these people, what makes you think I can't do the same for you?"
And so it was: Tanya and Scott were now just as immobile as everyone else in the restaurant.
"Hmmm, a fancy joint like this doesn't seem to be in your budget anymore. Let's go somewhere more your style."
They were now in an apartment, a studio, with walls covered in faded posters for old socialist events, four corners filled with discarded rags of clothing, a stained mattress, a bathroom infested with discarded bits of hair, (human and animal alike), and a tiny kitchen that smelled like something had died in it - and probably had. "Where are we?" Tanya asked, on the verge of tears.
"Uh, your new home? But I guess I can forgive your ignorance - you just moved in here this morning, after years of shuttling between shelters. You ladies were actually happy to be assigned to this dump, if you can believe it."
"What are you talking about?" Scott yelled, his voice almost cracking.
"Isn't it obvious - you two are now refugees! But not from anywhere you might have heard of. You've come here from my side of the tracks, if you catch my meaning. If not, well, you'll understand better in a second!" Instantaneously, their clothes were transfigured: Scott's button-down white shirt, dinner jacket, and black slacks became a white tank top and grey sweatpants. For Tanya, her tight dinner dress became a pair of black yoga pants and a purple crop top sports tee.
"That's an improvement, but your bodies and your clothes look a bit out of sync. Let's fix that, but a little slower this time. I want to really take it in. This is my favorite part!"
First, their heights were altered. Tanya became a little taller, but Scott shrank until he was shorter than his would-be fiancé. This was followed by a curious change in their skin. Scott gained wrinkles in his forehead, and crow’s feet on the sides of his eyes. Conversely, Tanya actually looked a bit younger, the few minor dermatological imperfections she had exhibited, erased.
Next, Scott's chiseled pecks softened, then rapidly expanded outward and downward, while Tanya's boobs deflated, and reverted to a more natural shape.
Scott's ass swelled, and his legs and hips ballooned to match it. Tanya's butt, on the other hand, actually flattened a little - it was still very round, just not as cartoonishly so as before. But, like her boyfriend, her thighs too grew, to better cohere with her new, all-natural rear.
Both of their stomachs gurgled as they thickened with fat, but Tanya's halted its growth long before Scott's, which didn't stop until it stuck out further than his massive boobs.
Their lips plumped, even Tanya's, which, like her old hindquarters, had been already surgically enhanced.
Their noses widened, and their skin darkened, in splotches that manifested here and there on their skin that soon spread outward until there was not a single patch of white left.
Their hair darkened until it was black, but Scott's changed again, becoming mostly grey, at the same time as it grew out to almost touch his shelf-like ass. It, like Tanya's, also curled, all of her hard work in the bathroom spent straightening it obliterated in an instant.
The last metamorphosis occurred in their eyes: their bright blues each became a hazelnut brown.
It was over: where once a tall, handsome, 35-year-old white man and his stunning white 34-year-old girlfriend had just stood, there was now a short, fat, and black 59-year-old grandma and her voluptuous, 18-year-old black granddaughter. They were not ugly now, by any means, but their good looks were of a different category entirely than before. Refinement or elegance, no, these were not the adjectives that came to mind for them post-transformation. Instead, one might think of "radiant" or "imperious" when trying to put their new forms into words. And yes, "sexy," but in a raw way, that struck one deeper than the shallow, artificial variety they had exemplified before.
This was all cold comfort to Scott and Tanya, or the people that used to be Scott and Tanya.
"We told you we didn't say anything about any goddamn refugees!" screamed the old woman who was Scott. She gasped as she heard her new voice - deep, but feminine, flavored by her advanced age. If she had use of her fat arms and wizened hands, she would have covered her mouth in shock.
The Mysterious Woman rolled her gold eyes. "And I already told you - I don't care. C'mon, girls, you're actually smarter than you were a few minutes ago. Use your heads!"
It was true, but that wasn't the extent of their mental changes. They were flooded with new memories, of lives they had not lived - and yet, impossibly, did!
Now Orla did start to cry.
"What are you saying right now?" Orla asked through her sobs. "What I remember...this life...it can't be real!"
"Oh, every bit of it happened, sweetheart. It's your old selves that are gone, as if they never existed at all. Actually, that's exactly right - Scott and Tanya really did never exist!"
"But this place...the Kingdom of...the Twin Suns...it's like something out of a nerdy movie, or some dumb video game!" protested Kahri.
The Mysterious Woman rolled her eyes again.
"Yeah, you would think that. I almost forgot how boring this universe is! I only come here to take a break, when I need some much-earned rest and relaxation. But the Kingdom of the Twin Suns is - was - an actual city, just not in this lower, lesser dimension."
"Isn't there something we can do, to make you change us back?" asked Orla.
"No, I can't. And I wouldn't if I could. Listen, the two sets of memories are going to coexist for a while, but don't worry, pretty soon the old ones will start to feel like nothing more than a bad dream. They're just not all that relevant anymore,
Kahri was crying now, too.
"And yes, the new ones are a bit tough. But you'll get over it. If you want my advice, save the wailing and gnashing of teeth for later. If you two are going to make it, you'd better start fixing this place up! And just watch - before long you'll be thankful we ran into each other. I have a feeling you'll find your new lives much more fulfilling than your old."
The Mysterious Woman blinked out of existence, and Kahri and Orla heard a popping noise as atmosphere rushed to fill the space she had just occupied.
But they could move again. Small mercies.
They hugged each other, feeling their new, yet familiar, bodies, with their new, yet familiar, hands.
They stayed like that for a while, shaking and sobbing.
But they eventually took the Mysterious Woman's advice, and got to work making their new home fit for human habitation.
Kahri woke in fright, so late that the only light in the room came from the propped-up phone, still playing their home movie on an endless loop (or until it ran out of battery). Kahri was pleased to see that it was currently at the 15-minute mark, when Orla reached up and grabbed either of Kahri's elephantine ass cheeks, digging her nails into the mass of cool fat.
It was a pleasant sight after the nightmare, which was already receding, just far enough out of reach for Kahri to have trouble remembering exactly what it was about. She could guess, though, as every one of her nightmares since her transmutation had been of one thing and one thing only - that great shadow that had blocked out the Twin Suns, on what had been such a perfect day...
She shook her head, as if to banish the thought, and got up to retrieve the phone from the dresser. Her thong had ridden up way into her ass crack as she slept, and she fished it out before she laid back down on the bed.
She checked the time on the home screen: it was 11:45 PM. Was Orla still dancing, Kahri wondered, or had she taken some of her clients into the back of the club for a more personal experience by now? She hoped it was the latter, and that at least one of the schmucks would make her come!
She turned the phone off, and placed it on the floor next to the bed. She hoped Orla wouldn't be out too late, but Kahri knew she fortunately didn't have any classes tomorrow until the afternoon, so she'd be able to sleep in even if she did. Poor Orla, who had to work enough for the two of them! If only she could speak English better, then she could start to pull her own weight, too. How lucky that Orla had arrived at this country so young, when she could still pick up a new language with ease, by just being exposed to it.
But hadn't Kahri been fluent in English, once upon a time? When she had a penis, and balls, and a good job, and...
There was no use in considering it. There were no tears left to cry over what had been lost. She should just go to bed, and the cold light of day would help brighten things up a bit.
Kahri rolled onto her side, so that her fat belly could comfortably rest on the mattress. Come back soon, my dear Orla, she implored, so that your lonely grandma might warm you with her big body...
Orla had led the cute white boy to the back room. She had seen him around before, but he hadn't had the nerve to ask for a private dance until tonight. But this time, he had been waiting for her as soon as she got off stage.
The next girl, a curvy Hispanic who lived in the tenement next to hers, was already getting into her routine, which was choreographed to her favorite reggaeton song.
"Hey", he said, struggling to make his voice loud enough to be heard over the Spanish rapping.
"Hey," replied. "You finally have the balls to ask me for some one one-on-one time?"
He nodded, and she grabbed his sweaty, trembling hand.
Now they were alone, so deep into the club that the deafening music in the main area was reduced to a dulled, quasi-subliminal thudding. Not that there wasn't music - there was, but it was quieter, more relaxing, but no less sexy. This was her room, so she got to choose what played, and she had picked recordings from various indigenous tribes around the globe, the kind of exotic melodies that reminded her of home.
When she had first been hired on here, this had been a shared space for all of the girls to use. When it quickly became obvious that Orla was bringing in more business than the others combined, the owner (who she had also initiated a relationship with, to curry favors such as this) had made it her exclusive area, much to the other dancers' chagrin.
She heard the mumbling, the whispering and dirty looks in the changing room. The seething resentment from her "colleagues" was almost palpable, that this immigrant girl could just walk in here one day and steal all the attention (and money) from them.
She dared any of them to try something. The Kingdom taught all of her citizens how to fight, starting from a very young age. It was necessary, when you had neighbors such as the Kingdom had. To the South, were the dreaded cannibal tribes, to the North, the Federation of the Saurians lurked in their fetid swamps. And to the West, lived the Vandal horde, with their blue, many-legged horses, and finally, to the East, lay the Empire of the Flayed, the ones so base they were known to sacrifice their own children to their primordial Gods.
All this to say that the Kingdom was laid siege to at least once a year, and thus her every subject needed to be adept at self-defense.
How ironic, then, that when the Kingdom's doom finally came, no amount of martial arts could hold it at bay. How ironic, also, that this would be the life now of a pampered white girl who had never known even a single day of struggle before.
Her musings were cut short by a smack on her right ass cheek. Orla was glad to see that the timid white boy had worked up the courage, even if it had taken three songs worth of a lap dance.
He smacked her left ass cheek now, though not as hard as she would have liked him to. But would he want to take this all the way? She reached down and picked up his hands, and guided them to her bare breasts. He started to play with her pierced nipples, though in a way that betrayed his inexperience. Good.
"Do you want to fuck me, honey?" she asked him over her shoulder, as she continued to grind her wide ass against his hard cock, which, she could feel, was longer than she had initially suspected. Honestly, she was surprised he hadn't cum already. It had happened before. Many, many times before.
"Y-yes," he said, nodding vigorously.
"Are you a virgin?" She could always tell.
"No. I've been with other girls…I mean, I have a girlfriend..."
Liar. He might have had a girlfriend, yes, but she hadn't screwed him yet.
"It's okay, baby," she purred.
She got off his lap and turned, putting one delicate hand up to his heart. It was beating so fast that she was almost surprised it wasn't literally pushing out of his chest, like in the cartoons she would sometimes watch back in the apartment, when looking for something mindless to unwind with.
She leaned forward and kissed him. The other girls never kissed the patrons. She was smart enough to guess why: unlike Orla they were always holding back, even when they were having sex with the clientele. She, by contrast, never hesitated to give her men her absolute all, mind, body, and soul. The orgasms were always stronger that way. And maybe, one day, one would fully reciprocate, and this man would save her from this shithole of a city.
"How much is it?" he asked, his cock now noticeably throbbing even while concealed by his jeans.
"Five hundred. You got it?"
It almost made her feel bad, asking for the money. In another universe, she would have happily fucked him for free. But she and Kahri needed it, desperately. They couldn't stay in this complex for much longer. It wasn't safe.
"Yeah, I have it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, there's an ATM in the lobby. I need three hundred for the private dance, and the five hundred for the rest."
He nodded, and got up, walking awkwardly to compensate for his stiff penis.
Orla sat down, and sighed. She looked at her phone. No messages from her grandmother, but she learned it was already past midnight. It was okay, once she was done with him (and she doubted it would take long at all) she would have made enough for the night, and could head on back.
It was now 2:00 AM, and she was walking to the train station. It was even colder now than before, and the contrast between it and the sweltering temperature of the strip club made the former even harder to endure.
Still, she had made what she needed, though her “session” with the white boy had gone exactly as she had expected: fast, and without much pleasure for herself. But maybe she should take pride in the speed, as evidence of her growing sexual prowess.
He had come back, cash in hand, and nervously took his seat back on the red couch, his skinny legs already unsteady. She didn’t ask for a condom – she had her own stash, provided by the Management, that were still sealed and well within their expiration date. She had fished one out of the bowl placed atop the end table next to the couch, and had already opened it. It was one of the larger sizes. The largest, that came in a golden wrapper, had remained woefully unused during her employment, though she hoped she would need one before long, if just to say she had.
She got on her knees in front of the white boy, and felt his rock-hard penis through his jeans. It was a risk, but she did it anyway: she knelt down and gently bit it through the tough fabric. He moaned, but not enough to have cum. Good. She would have taken the money regardless if he had (and the bouncers would have ensured it), but it was a big penis, and she longed to feel it inside her.
She undid the fly, and fished the organ out of its boxer’s prison. As suspected, it was a fairly big one – at least seven inches, by her estimation, and fairly thick. And leaking pre-cum. She stuck her tongue out and licked the clear liquid up, causing the white boy to shudder, from his groin to his shoulders.
Unfortunately, though, it was circumcised. This was not some great shock, as she knew most men in this country were. Case in point, every man she had fucked in the “back room” had been cut. But such a practice would have been forbidden in the Kingdom of the Twin Suns, let alone when done to infants! Any kind of genital mutilation such as this was strictly reserved for the court eunuchs who served the King and Queen in their palace, situated in the very heart of the capital city.
But in America, it was common practice. She could only guess at how that had come to be. She had asked a few of her customers why their parents had done this to them, but they had no answer or explanation. It was just something they did.
Oh, kind of like fucking your own grandmother, right? They’d find that pretty weird, wouldn’t they? Who are you to judge, girl?
Yes, yes. This was the nature of cultural differences – what was taboo in one society could be second nature in another. She was smart enough to understand that. But she wondered if she would ever be able to really accept it. Kahri, she knew, wouldn’t, not at her age.
In the meantime, they could write a very long list of things that would have been beyond the pale in the Kingdom of the Twin Suns but went without comment in the “West.”
Insurance. Single-family homes. Married couples that had pets instead of children. Monotheism. Inter-faith relationships. Usury. Girls that couldn’t hold their own in a physical conflict…
She rolled the condom down onto the girthy, pale penis. She was almost disappointed to see that it fit perfectly. The golden ones would have to wait, yet again!
She stood up and climbed onto the couch, then lowered her big black ass down on his lap. Expertly, she twisted around part-way, found the encased cock, and inserted it into her slick pussy. They exhaled sharply, in unison. Obviously, the sheath was doing little to dull the sensation for him.
Slowly, she began to move her ass up and down. It felt good, but she knew it wouldn’t be long before he was filling the plastic pouch with his seed. She leaned down and kissed him again. As soon as her full lips touched his, he groaned, and his grip on her butt cheeks tightened. It was done.
But she didn’t show her disappointment. She kissed his forehead, and carefully removed his softening penis from her moist sex. She smiled at him, genuinely. Another one on the board, another notch on her belt. And she had provided a valuable service: for now, like Abi, he was a man, though in his case she doubted he’d be founding an empire any time soon, or slaying a terrible monster.
“Not a virgin anymore, are you?” she teased.
He, wisely, didn’t even try to argue this time.
She had given him her number. That was nominally against the rules, but she liked him, and wouldn’t be against going on a date at some point. Did she not need a husband? Kahri had cautioned her to wait until she was at a hospital, and could successfully bag a rich, young doctor. Well, as far as she knew, her lover for the night was already in med school, and she was already on her way to fulfilling her grandmother’s dream for her. And even if he weren’t, it’s not like doctors were the only people who made decent money!
Back home “doctor” wasn’t even a profession, and lawyer...they didn’t even have a word for it. And yet, Kahri had insisted Orla nab one or the other, for purely financial reasons. Hey, now that Orla thought of it that way, maybe her grandmother had acclimated to this new nation more than she had realized! To not wed purely for love, to bring material concerns into the equation…ugh, this was a mindset alien to the people of the Kingdom.
But they were the only two left, so maybe that wasn’t entirely true anymore.
The train was late. It should have been there at least five minutes ago, and try as she might, she could not see any incoming lights that would have indicated an imminent arrival. And it was fucking freezing.
She checked her phone again. No messages from Kahri. She had certainly long gone to sleep, and how she yearned to be next to her, naked, her grandmother’s big, old body wrapped around her own like a blanket If she tried, she could even conjure her scent, which reminded her of those long, lost, sunny days in the Kingdom…
Orla’s heart dropped. In the direction of the stairs, she could hear voices. Loud, male voices. Loud, young male voices. This wasn’t even the weekend. This could only mean bad news.
She turned, but she was near the end of the platform. There were no alternative means of escape behind her, and, even if she ran past the stairs, the approaching males would see her, and surely give chase. There was no escape, at least through non-interventionist means.
A group of four young black men, laughing, outfitted in big jackets and jewelry, reached the platform.
They quickly spotted Orla, the sole other inhabitant of the dirty station.
They made their way toward her.
“Damn, girl. Fuck!”
“Hey, how you doin’, baby? You out here alone?”
“You need some warmin’ up?”
One, the fattest and shortest of the bunch, just whistled. Orla wondered if he was just too stupid to come up with something to say, as cliché as his options were.
They surrounded her.
“What you doin’ out here so late?”
“Yea, you hoein?”
“Hey, how ‘bout a free one?”
It was obvious – they were going to rape her. Or worse. She could try to call the police, but, by the time they arrived, it would already be too late. She could try to shout for help, but there was no one else around, and who would try to intervene even if there were? Only a fool.
“She thick as all hell, bruh!”
“Just how I like’em!”
“Hey, you even speak English, bih?
The fattest of the bunch, who was now directly behind her, just whistled once more.
She would have to fight. There was no point in waiting for them to make the first move. In a sense, they already had. Pity for them that they had not acted more decisively.
Orla snapped her hand forward, crushing the windpipe of the man in front of her, the one she guessed was their leader. She had performed the move last on a Saurian Brave that had scaled the city wall during one of their regular incursions. This was much easier.
As he doubled over, desperately trying to breathe, she grabbed his pistol out of his waistband, flicked off the safety, and shot the men to either side of him: one in the head, two in the chest each.
She had been taken to the gun range by the bodyguard at the club a few times, her idea more than his. But she had wanted to try the customary weapon of this land for a long time. She had seen it in enough television shows and films.
A “natural” he had called her, after she made bull’s eye after bull’s eye on the paper targets. But it was a lot easier than a bow and arrow, her armament of choice when she was in the army. She had mastered it when she was still a child, with help from her grandfather, who had given her his own custom-made piece on her sixteenth birthday, that he had built himself from the horn and sinew of a three-horned reptile cow that he had hunted himself.
She turned on her heel to confront the fat one. Idiot: he should have broken her neck when he had the chance, when she was too busy killing his buddies.
He was backing up, his hands out in front of him as if that would do something to stop a bullet. She almost laughed. How pathetic!
“C’mon, we wasn’t going to do nothin’!” he pleaded, while shaking his head in unison with his gloved mitts.
One in the head, two in the chest, just like in the movies she and Kahri had watched on their little TV on her nights off.
Merciless? No, the man was a rapist, and she had spared countless other girls by putting a permanent end to him. If anything, she wished they had run into her sooner, before they had the chance to victimize anyone else.
She didn’t even feel bad about it, about killing any of them. An American girl might, but she was not an American girl. She hadn’t been for a while.
The one she had assumed was their leader was now on his back, wheezing. Orla put the last bullet right between his eyes. He was probably doomed, but why take a risk?
She put the pistol into her own waistband, under her puffy coat. Her instinct had been to throw it onto the tracks, but that would have been stupid: her fingerprints were all over it, and she had provided a copy of them to the government when she was processed.
So she ran down the stairs, into the cover of night. She’d have to make it back on foot, but this was not a concern. She felt like she was floating off the cracked concrete, such was her elation.
What had she been so scared of? All this world had to put up against her were men - and men were nothing compared to what she had already faced and survived.
Orla finally made it back to the apartment, over an hour later. Her pulse was going faster than a Sun Dragon, but she decided she would let her poor grandmother sleep, tempted though she was to awaken her and tell her all about what had happened.
She stripped, and got into bed beside her, not even bothering to put her clothes in the small hamper in the corner.
Kahri reached over and pulled her naked granddaughter close. That was all Orla needed – in less than a minute she was asleep, her breathing in total sync with her grandmother.
Orla woke to the smell of bacon, her favorite. Kahri, still naked, brought her over a plate filled with the succulent meat and three scrambled eggs, and she ate, letting bits of food fall to the bed while telling her grandmother the story of what had transpired the previous night.
Kahri said nothing as Orla orated; only nodding solemnly when Orla explained that she had still executed the surrendering male.
When Orla was finished, both with her breakfast and recounting, Kahri finally spoke.
“Do you feel any remorse?” she asked.
“No. Not even a little.”
“Good. You shouldn’t. They were wicked men, and wicked men deserve nothing less than what you gave them. I only pray now that they are burning in the Underworld, boiled in vats of acid piss, after being flayed by one’s of the One-Eyed Judge’s hulking executioners!”
She took Orla’s hands, and they did indeed pray for just that.
“Oh, One-Eyed Judge, please hear us: let the men felled by Orla pay for their crimes for eons to come, until the end of time itself!”
Kahri removed her hands from Orla’s.
“What do you need of me now?” she asked her granddaughter.
After Orla’s classes were finished (Biology 101, Gods damn it), dinner had been hastily devoured (a whole chicken, along with mashed potatoes and green beans), and orgasms induced in Orla (the conquering hero, Kahri had been honored to finger her while sucking on her breasts, until she came so hard she squirted all over the sheets), they had gone out for a midnight walk, down to the waterfront.
They found an isolated spot, and Orla threw the pistol into the black, polluted water. Not without regret, either: she would have liked to have kept it, for further protection, but it wasn’t worth the risk. What would Kahri do if her granddaughter were arrested? How would she survive?
“I thought the violence was over”, sighed Kahri, bracing herself against the chill of winter. They could speak freely - even if someone overheard them, they were using their native tongue, and there were no others alive who knew it.
“Come now, grandma. You are wise enough to know better. There may not be any rotworms or bloodvultures in this world, but there are men, and wherever men are, so is bloodshed.”
“I suppose that’s true. Do you think I could have done so well, had it been me?”
“Why would you have been out so late? Visiting a gentlemen caller?”
“Please, humor an old lady. Make me feel better about myself
Kahri reached down and playfully grabbed Orla’s ass through the sweatpants she was wearing.
“Of course, grandma! You are old but you are strong. Your grip on my butt right now is a testament to that!”
“And fat, too. Don’t forget that.”
“Haven’t you always said that all “women should be fat?” That that’s what men really want?
“That was how I was raised. My mother - your great-grandmother - weighed over 300 pounds when she died, and my father loved every dense inch of her. But here…”
“They’re just as big!” Orla interjected.
“Yes, but they’re so ashamed of it! In the Kingdom, women would walk around with their big bellies proudly hanging out! It was a symbol of their femininity! My mother - even when she weighed as much as a reptile-cow, she still was cheered on the streets, by much younger men! Can you imagine that happening in this city?”
“It’s the food. In the Kingdom, you could live well past one hundred even if you were what they label here as “obese.” Ah, such an ugly word!
“No, it wasn’t just what we ate. There was magic in the air in the Kingdom. It covered everything, filled everyone. That’s why we were so happy, even when the Walls were being besieged by our enemies.”
“Yeah, now that you mention it: one of the best times in my life was when we were attacked by one of the cannibal tribes. You remember, when I was seventeen? I spent every single day on the Wall, and it lasted for weeks, but I can’t remember ever laughing so much, ever feeling so alive! I still think back fondly to that period of my life, when it could have been taken from me at any moment! How ironic!
“And these Americans: they hardly know hardship at all, and yet they act like they’re already living in the Underworld!”
They walked in silence for a minute. It had begun to snow.
“Do you ever think about the day it happened?” Orla asked Kahri.
“I don’t think an hour passes that I don’t” replied Kahri.
“Me too. But I try.”
It was another perfect day in the Kingdom, and Orla had Wall duty. She didn’t mind, though, things had been quiet for a few months now, the only action coming when an animal strayed too close to the city (and even in these cases, all Orla would do was fire a few arrows in the direction of the creature, to scare it off). Plus, all of her friends were here!
Orla was presently staring out at the horizon, outfitted in her usual attire: a golden breastplate and golden thigh plates. Her feet and flat stomach were completely exposed, but this was more than the men had: for them, their whole torsos went totally uncovered.
Reckless? Maybe, but it was too hot to wear much else, and it came with the added benefit of giving the young soldiers something to ogle.
Orla was currently hoping to catch a glimpse of Ganga, a handsome guardsmen who, like her, had recently celebrated his eighteenth birthday.
Each time Orla saw him it seemed he had grown an inch taller, and his biceps had grown an inch in circumference. She wondered how he would look today!
The only problem was that Orla was not the only one pursuing him: there was another girl, Taka, who was interested in him as well. And she may not have been as comely as Orla, but she did have bigger tits and a bigger ass, as impossible as that may have seemed.
Which would win out in the end? It was hard to say at this point, but Orla didn’t like that she hadn’t spotted Ganga so far during her shift. Was it because Taka was blowing him in one of the storerooms? It was very possible - that’s where Orla had done the same with him last week!
“Slow day, huh?”
It was Saben, one of Orla’s closest friends. They usually spent their time on the Wall this way, bullshitting, gossiping, and complaining. It wasn’t like there was a whole lot to actually do.
“I heard there was a bog jackal on the North side. They threw spears at it until it ran off,” Orla replied.
Word traveled fast on the Wall, despite its length.
Saben looked down at her own bow, fastened to her hip.
“I’d welcome the target practice, even if we wouldn’t actually hit it.”
“Same,” Orla said, while looking down at her own bow. “I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve even had to touch it.”
“Or been touched.”
They both laughed at that. Their commanding officer, a 28-year-old man named Jambovan, didn’t even shoot them a dirty look. He was too busy talking to his own friends!
It was no big deal. The land surrounding the Kingdom on all sides was so barren and flat that any enemy approaching was always known of for hours, if not days, in advance.
“Why, when did you last lay with your grandmother?” Orla asked.
“Last night! It took so long I almost fell asleep! And the nerve – the last time I ate her out, she came almost as soon as my tongue piercing touched her clit!”
They giggled again.
“So, at least you got a little somethin’ somethin’,” Orla teased. “My grandma’s been too busy with my grandpa! Gods, we can hear them from across the house!”
Their guffaws were cut short. Saben had spotted something in the distance.
What is that?” asked Saben.
A dark cloud had appeared over the distant, snow-capped mountains.
Orla shrugged.
“Probably just a storm. It might not even make it over here.”
Orla hoped that would be enough reassurance to get Saben to stop the subject. She didn’t want to talk about the weather. She wanted to know if Saben had had any success with Kalam, her crush, who, rumor had it, had the biggest cock among all of the guardsmen (which must have meant it was pretty fucking huge, considering how large Ganga had been when she had taken him in her mouth).
“It’s moving too fast to be a storm.”
Why was she still going on about this? Orla looked again at this oh-so-interesting atmospheric phenomenon, but, to her surprise, Saben was right: it was moving very fast. In the time since she had last bothered to pay attention to it, it had gone well past the mountains, placing it now, she estimated, above one of the bottomless lakes that lay to their South.
“And where are the animals? A hurricane this bad should have brought a stampede with it…”
Other guards had spotted the anomaly now as well. As they watched the cloud get closer and closer, they all realized simultaneously that this was not a cloud at all.
What kind of cloud had eleven tails? Six wings? Five heads? Scales? Fur? Horns? Spikes? Legs the width of towers?
Orla said it aloud first.
“Oh my Gods, it’s the Great Beast.”
Some impotently shot arrows or threw spears at it. Some ran. Most just stood there.
Orla ran. Down the nearest set of stairs, into the interior of the Wall. Then down even more stairs. Finally, she reached the ground floor, and spotted a door to the inside of the Kingdom.
Ganga stood in her way.
“Hey, where are you going?” he asked, slightly amused by her hurry.
“Ganga, it’s the Great Beast. It’s here, it’s back!” Orla shouted, out of breath.
“Really?” He arched one eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know if I’m as powerful as Abi, but I can see what I can do. Now, what did it look like? I always forget just how many heads it has, so I need to know what I’m up against here.”
The fool thought it was some sort of game, a new stage of their courtship. Orla didn’t have time for it. She had to get to her family.
So she disabled him the fastest way she could think of: by kicking him square in his balls, which were only protected by his loincloth.
He fell to the floor, howling in pain.
Orla just leaped over him.
Out on the street, Orla weaved her way in and out of the gawking pedestrians, heads turned upwards to try to catch a glimpse of whatever force was beginning to block out the light of the Twin Suns. She wanted to warn them, to implore them to run as she was doing, but that would have just slowed her down.
She knew she had probably killed Ganga by incapacitating him the way she had, but she couldn’t think about that now. He wasn’t her husband, her family, and her first obligation had to be to them. She wouldn’t have expected anything different from him if the roles had been reversed.
She leaped over a canal. The striped fish below the surface of the water were calm, she noticed. But that was to be expected: they had nothing to fear from the Great Beast. His only enemy was Man.
She’d be home soon, there were only a few twisting alleyway shortcuts she had left to navigate.
From the direction she had come, she now heard screaming.
She burst through the front door, almost on the verge of collapsing. In the foyer were most of her family: her older brother, her parents, and her grandfather.
“What is it? What is wrong?” asked her Mother.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the Wall?” asked her Father.
Orla struggled to get out the words, due to a combination of exhaustion and fear.
“It’s the Great Beast.”
“Impossible,” dismissed her Grandfather, with a wave of his hand.
They all went quiet as they heard the sounds of a distant explosion, so mighty it caused the whole house to shake.
“What was that?” asked her Mother.
“It was the Wall exploding,” explained Orla. It was the most obvious explanation, based on how far away it seemed to be. And even if it wasn’t, it didn’t really matter. The point was, the Great Beast was back, and it was here to annihilate the civilization that had been erected in mockery of it.
“What are we to do?” cried her Mother. She had always been such a cool-headed woman, but Orla couldn’t blame her for being scared. They could take on cannibal tribes and Saurians but the Great Beast was something else entirely.
Kahri, her grandmother, had come rushing into the room, her boobs swinging side-to-side like pendulums under her robes.
“What is going on here?” she asked. “I was taking a nap in the living room. What caused that noise?”
“It’s the Great Beast,” Orla replied. “I saw it on the Wall. We all saw it.”
“The Engine of Renewal…” her brother whispered in almost reverent tones, recalling a line from the legend they all knew by heart. They just didn’t account that the Great Beasts itself might have been renewed!
“Well, we know what to do,” her grandfather declared, puffing out his barrel of a chest. “Everyone, get your weapons. We are all warriors. We have all been made into real Men and Women by our grandmothers. If this really is the Great Beast, then we have no recourse, but to go out there and ribbit.
He had croaked, like a frog.
Perplexed by his own vocalization, her grandfather reached a hand up to his mouth - a hand that was growing webs between its fingers. It never made it to its destination, blocked as it were by his expanding throat.
Orla and Kahri looked around them in horror. Their whole family was changing in the same way: their skin was turning purple and green, spines were bursting from their backs, and they were all rapidly shrinking. The last thing that changed for them all was their eyes: no longer were their pupils round. Now, they were oval and horizontal.
Frog eyes, for frogs.
The amphibians hopped around the tattered remains of their former clothes. The one that had been her mother shot its pink tongue out to snatch a fly out of the air.
Kahri and Orla were completely speechless. Another explosion shook the house, causing a decorative pot, perched near the door, to fall to the floor and shatter. Orla wondered what had been destroyed this time. Another piece of the Wall, or the local temple? Either way, Orla couldn’t imagine how many people had already been killed.
“They’ll be safe this way. The Great Beast doesn’t hurt animals. They are his people, in a fashion. But I’ll teleport them into one of the canals, just to be safe. Wouldn’t want them to get crushed by any debris.”
Kahri and Orla turned to see a woman emerge from deeper in the house. She was blonde, had on a tight red dress, and, strangest of all, had pale, porcelain skin. She carefully stepped around the frogs in her heels, which continued to mindlessly jump about and croak. Whatever intelligence their former human selves possessed had not been transferred over.
“What are you? What are you doing?” screamed Orla at the Mysterious Woman.
“Saving you. You’ll understand better in a moment. Just try not to think too hard about the mechanics of it all. What came first, what came next, that sort of thing. Some things are just beyond a mortal’s understanding.”
Some of the frogs had begun to playfully fight with one another. Their pet Sabertooth was watching them intently, pupils dilated, ready to strike.
The Mysterious Woman snapped her manicured fingers.
You know the rest.
They had finally made it back to their apartment. Neither of them mentioned it to the other, but both had half expected to find a squadron of police cars outside the entrance to the complex. Since there hadn’t been, a small sense of hope had begun to grow in them, that maybe the cops wouldn’t try too hard to find the killer of those men. And even if they did, would they ever suspect that it was a young refugee girl who had taken on that gang of scoundrels? Maybe there was more working in their favor than they had realized…
In any event, it was late, and all either wanted at the moment was to sleep. Sleep, then eat, then fuck, and then it was back to dancing for Orla. The usual routine, yes, but a great weight had been lifted from Orla’s shoulders. This universe had thrown its worst at her, and she had survived. So while the next day would bring largely more of the same, Orla sensed that something seismic had shifted as well, on some deeper level, and that things wouldn’t be going on like this for much longer.
They’d be changing for the better.